Working as a BPO services agent means the person has to interact with a variety of people. This means that the people would be from different backgrounds, cultures, demographics and will be speaking different languages. Hence, if one wants to perform the best at this job, he needs to understand the culture and be “culturally sensitive”. You need to understand which emotion needs what sort of tone and ascertain what expectations the caller has. Besides this, he should also know the ways to calm down infuriated customers.
Immaculate understanding of all the aforementioned things makes up for the best customer experience. however, there is no denial to the fact that implementing all of them while talking to the caller without fail is really hard and requires years of experience.
Thus, here we have mentioned certain tips for you to look at for being culturally sensitive easily. • Listen-
Listening carefully is a great practice. This can help an agent in understanding a lot many things about the caller. First, the tone will help you in understanding what the customer wants from you. Is he expecting empathy, is he expecting an apology or is he expecting just a solution? Moreover, listening patiently can also help you in understanding pronoun you should use for them. The tip here is to be empathetic and give the best solution possible.
• Ask for elucidation-
After listening to the problem and empathizing with them, as a BPO services agent you must rephrase what they have said to confirm if you have understood the right thing. This tip is especially helpful for those agents who find it difficult to understand what the caller is saying if he speaks at a fast pace. However, beware, don’t ask too many questions as this may irate the customer.
• Learn to be patient-
Obviously, there will be callers who would be way too emotional or way too angry and thus will go on telling their problem again and again while telling you incidences related and unrelated to it in detail. A not so culturally sensitive agent will surely lose his cool in such a situation, however, if you are culturally sensitive you would be patient and keep listening to them patiently.
• Respect them-
Regardless of who the caller is they all deserve to be treated with respect equally. You should never judge them on the basis of their dialect. Also, if a consumer doesn’t know English, you should converse with him in Hindi only. In fact, every effective BPO services agent must remember that callers need to be treated like a king as they are the ones who give business to you.
The aforementioned points clearly tell you how the agents can be more culturally sensitive. However, becoming culturally sensitive takes time. It comes with practice.